Septembers of Shiraz

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More About This Book

Overview

In the aftermath of the Iranian revolution, rare-gem dealer Isaac Amin is arrested, wrongly accused of being a spy. Terrified by his disappearance, his family must reconcile a new world of cruelty and chaos with the collapse of everything they have known. As Isaac navigates the terrors of prison, and his wife feverishly searches for him, his children struggle with the realization that their family may soon be forced to embark on a journey of incalculable danger.

Editorial Reviews

Chicago Tribune
“The same seems true about talent, which Sofer clearly possesses in abundance.”
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From The Critics
“Gripping work…a powerful story honestly told.”

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780061130410
  • Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
  • Publication date: 4/29/2008
  • Edition description: Reprint
  • Pages: 368
  • Sales rank: 193,685
  • Series: P.S. Series
  • Product dimensions: 5.31 (w) x 8.00 (h) x 0.82 (d)

Meet the Author

Dalia Sofer
Dalia Sofer
Iranian-born writer Dalia Sofer hit it big with her debut novel, The Septembers of Shiraz, "as beautiful and delicate as a book about suffering can be." -- The New York Times

Biography

Dalia Sofer was born in Iran and fled at the age of ten to the United States with her family. She received her MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College in 2002 and has been a resident at Yaddo. In March 2007 she was the first recipient of the Sirenland Fellowship, given each year to an unpublished author to attend the Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano, Italy. She has been a contributor to NPR's All Things Considered, Poets & Writers magazine, the National Poetry Almanac of the Academy of American Poets, and The New York Sun. Her essays, "Of These, Solitude" and "A Prenuptial Visit to Chartres" were included, respectively, in the anthologies Yentl's Revenge: The Next Wave of Jewish Feminism (Seal Press, 2001) and France, a Love Story (Seal Press, 2004). She lives in New York City.
Author biography courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers

Good To Know

My first job was in retail in a clothing store on Madison Avenue. (It was the most ruthless job I've ever had, because I experienced, firsthand, the raw rudeness of people. Nowhere else can you find the sordid depths of the human soul than you can as a shop clerk on Madison Avenue!)

I like to take very long walks in the city - sometimes as long as seventy or eighty blocks. Walking shakes things up inside me. It is the best mood stabilizer.

I am fascinated by religious iconography. This began in Assisi, Italy, where I spent some time many years ago.

    1. Hometown:
      New York, NY USA
    1. Education:
      NYU, BA with major in French Literature and minor in Creative Writing; Sarah Lawrence College, MFA in Fiction

Read an Excerpt

The Septembers of Shiraz

By Dalia Sofer

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Copyright © 2007 Dalia Sofer
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780061130403

Chapter One

When Isaac Amin sees two men with rifles walk into his office at half past noon on a warm autumn day in Tehran, his first thought is that he won’t be able to join his wife and daughter for lunch, as promised.

"Brother Amin?" the shorter of the men says.

Isaac nods. A few months ago they took his friend Kourosh Nassiri, and just weeks later news got around that Ali the baker had disappeared.

"We’re here by orders of the Revolutionary Guards." The smaller man points his rifle directly at Isaac and walks toward him, his steps too long for his legs. "You are under arrest, Brother."

Isaac shuts the inventory notebook before him. He looks down at his desk, at the indifferent items witnessing this event—the scattered files, a metal paperweight, a box of Dunhill cigarettes, a crystal ashtray, and a cup of tea, freshly brewed, two mint leaves floating inside. His calendar is spread open and he stares at it, at today’s date, September 20, 1981, at the notes scribbled on the page—call Mr. Nakamura regarding pearls, lunch at home, receive shipment of black opals from Australia around 3:00 PM, pick up shoes from cobbler—appointments he won’t be keeping. On theopposite page is a glossy photo of the H¯afez mausoleum in Shiraz. Under it are the words, "City of Poets and Roses."

"May I see your papers?" Isaac asks.

"Papers?" the man chuckles. "Brother, don’t concern yourself with papers."

The other man, silent until now, takes a few steps. "You are Brother Amin, correct?" he asks.

"Yes."

"Then please follow us."

He examines the rifles again, the short man’s stubby finger already on the trigger, so he gets up, and with the two men makes his way down his five-story office building, which seems strangely deserted. In the morning he had noticed that only nine of his sixteen employees had come to work, but he had thought nothing of it; people had been unpredictable lately. Now he wonders where they are. Had they known?

As they reach the pavement he senses the sun spreading down his neck and back. He feels calm, almost numb, and he reminds himself he should remain so. A black motorcycle is parked by the curb, next to his own polished, emerald-green Jaguar. The small man smirks at the sleek automobile, then mounts his motorcycle, releases the brake, and ignites the engine. Isaac mounts next, with the second soldier behind him. "Hold on tight," the soldier says. Isaac’s arms girdle the small man and the third man rests his hands on Isaac’s waist. Sandwiched between the two he feels the bony back of one against his stomach and the belly of the other pushing into his back. The bitter smell of unwashed hair makes him gag. Turning his head to take a breath, he glimpses one of his employees, Morteza, frozen on the sidewalk like a bystander at a funeral procession.

The motorcycle swerves through the narrow spaces between jammed cars. He watches the city glide by, its transformation now so obvious to him: movie posters and shampoo advertisements have been replaced by sweeping murals of clerics; streets once named after kings now claim the revolution as their patron; and once-dapper men and women have become bearded shadows and black veils. The smell of kebab and charcoaled corn, rising from the street vendor’s grill, fills the lunch hour. He had often treated himself to a hot skewer of lamb kebab here, sometimes bringing back two dozen for his employees, who would congregate in the kitchen, slide the tender meat off the skewers with slices of bread, and chew loudly. Isaac joined them from time to time, and while he could not allow himself to eat with equal abandon, he would be pleased for having initiated the gathering.

The vendor, fanning his grilled meat, looks at Isaac on the motorcycle, stupefied. Isaac looks back, but his captors pick up speed and he feels dizzy all of a sudden, ready to topple over. He locks his fingers around the driver’s girth.

They stop at an unassuming gray building, dismount the bike, and enter. Greetings are exchanged among the revolutionaries and Isaac is led to a room smelling of sweat and feet. The room is small, maybe one-fifth the size of his living room, with mustard-yellow walls. He is seated on a bench, already filled with about a dozen men. He is squeezed between a middle-aged man and a young boy of sixteen or seventeen.

"I don’t know how they keep adding more people on this bench," the man next to him mumbles, as though to himself but loudly enough for Isaac to hear. Isaac notices the man is wearing pajama pants with socks and shoes.

"How long have you been here?" he asks, deciding that the man’s hostility has little to do with him.

"I’m not sure," says the man. "They came to my house in the middle of the night. My wife was hysterical. She insisted on making me a cheese sandwich before I left. I don’t know what got into her. She cut the cheese, her hands shaking. She even put in some parsley and radishes. As she was about to hand me the sandwich one of the soldiers grabbed it from her, ate it in three or four bites, and said, ‘Thanks, Sister. How did you know I was starving?’" Hearing this story makes Isaac feel fortunate; his family at least had been spared a similar scene. "This bench is killing my back," the man continues. "And they won’t even let me use the bathroom."

Isaac rests his head against the wall. How odd that he should get arrested today of all days, when he was going to make up his long absences to his wife and daughter by joining them for lunch. For months he had been leaving the house at dawn, when the snow-covered Elburz Mountains slowly unveiled themselves in . . .



Continues...
Excerpted from The Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer Copyright © 2007 by Dalia Sofer. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating 4
( 24 )

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  • Posted April 30, 2009

    more from this reviewer

    Amazing debut!

    The Septembers of Shiraz is an amazing debut novel. Ms. Sofer eloquently depicts the struggle that Jewish jeweler Isaac Amin and his family face after the Iranian revolution of the 1970s. The prose is beautiful and has an underlying sadness to it - obviously due to the subject matter (fear and suffering). The Amin family (Isaac, Farnaz, Shirin and Parviz) are fully developed, realistic and will remain with you long after the story ends. Enjoy the following excerpt:

    She peers inside the shop through the glass. Nothing is left but dusty shelves, and a glass filled with turbid tea on the counter, along with a half-eaten sandwich, surrounded now by ants---Shahriar Beheshti's final lunch. "Looks like they got him recently."
    The Septembers of Shiraz

    I believe that Ms. Sofer is an author to watch for in the future. I know I will be looking.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted March 18, 2011

    more from this reviewer

    A Good 9/11 Story

    I read Falling Man after my co-worker and dear friend had finished reading it. Together, like so many other Americans we had our eyes and attention glued to the TV (in our case it was located in the employee lounge) that horrible day on Sept. 11th. So, back when this book was released and I found out that the author used 9/11 as a backdrop I could hardly wait till she passed the book on to me. In my opinion, I thought Don Delillo created an excellent story that gave me an insight into the lives of different people that lived through that terrible day; Keith Neudecker, the lawyer, his wife Lianne, and others, and how they struggled to cope with their lives afterward. The story moved along at a good pace. Overall, for a book with a 9/11 theme this is a very good read.

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted August 4, 2010

    more from this reviewer

    Beautiful and lyrica

    I felt for Farnaz and Shirin the most. They were alone with no information on Isaac. I thought Farnaz did her best to deal with Isaac's arrest even though their marriage wasn't exactly what you called perfect. I was very impressed how Shirin dealt with her father being arrested. Especially when she did hide those files. It might have made a difference and with that little act, it could have saved some lives.

    The story was well written and did tug on a lot of emotions while reading. Isaac's time in prison was filled with despair and you could feel his hope fading away as he counts the days of his time spent there. The book was filled with close calls, and immediate suspicion among characters as to who's playing the role of informant. As a reader, you could really feel Shirin's tension and fright over being exposed for what she's done.

    I wasn't sure what to make on the separate story arc on Parviz. It was interesting as he was struggling with his own identity, yet I felt that it wasn't as interesting as the main story arc that was taking place in Iran. I felt as if that story arc was added just for the sake of adding more to the plot.

    Overall, the story is beautifully written and emotional. There is an inkling of hope at the end of the novel and the reader is only left with wonder at the outcome of the characters in the book. I do recommend others to read this book. There's not many you see that takes place in Iran in this particular time in history.

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  • Posted April 14, 2010

    Meh

    The story is definitely interesting, but I was disappointed by the mediocre quality of writing. This book seemed more appropriate for a teenaged reader, not a well-read adult.

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 11, 2008

    what an intriguing story

    I am so glad that I stumbled over this book. Together with Khaled Housseins two books this is one of the best books that I have read this year. It is so intriguing and imposisble to put down. The plot is amazingly realistic and even my husband who prefers to read non-fiction couldn't put this book down until it was over and then we both were sad that there was no more of the book. Hope to get more from this promising author.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted October 1, 2007

    Could not resist this book...

    I can't believe this is Sofer's first book. Normally, I'm not inclined to buy debut novels - regardless of how good the reviews are. Also, I'm even less likely, generally, to buy hardcover books. I've got plenty of work-related stuff to lug around daily, so paperbacks are simply easier on my back. This book, however, was an exception. Indeed, it is exceptional. I started reading chapter 1 in the bookstore, thinking I'll skim a few lines before heading over to the 'new in paperback' table. But I was hooked. It didn't grab me aggressively like a mystery or action novel. I can't explain it, really. It just made me want to sit down right there in the store and keep reading. Indeed, the subject is compelling and the book does begin with a dramatic event. But Sofer's prose is so eloquent - it makes you want to keep reading simply for the joy of reading, as well as to find out what happens. As for my dilemma - whether to buy or not to buy? Well, there were no comfortable places to sit in the bookstore, so I took the plunge and bought it. I deliberately read it slowly to maximize the pleasure from my investment. Then, I re-read it and enjoyed it even more.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted August 26, 2007

    Outstanding first novel

    Remarkably moving, beautifully written.

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted December 9, 2008

    more from this reviewer

    A reviewer

    In 1981 in Tehran, the Revolutionary Guards arrest Jewish gem trader Isaac Amin at is his business office accusing him of espionage. The real reason for his incarceration is religion as the Ayatollah led Muslim fanaticism has taken the country. Besides being Jewish and affluent, Isaac, like any business man in Iran, did have loose ties to the fallen regime of the Shah, but those who hold him prisoner for seditious acts need no proof to do so.----------- As Isaac observes torture and execution, he worries what will happen to his wife Farnaz and their daughter Shirin. He thanks God that their son Parviz attends college in Brooklyn. Although he has no way of knowing what is happening to his two females as contact is forbidden, he has cause to fret about their safety. Farnaz is spiraling into an out of control depression as she anguishes what to do. Shirin is outraged at the persecution of her father and she steals documents from the father of a playmate the man runs the prison where her dad has vanished inside. In Brooklyn, Parviz, who was not very religious to start with, has deeper doubts with his father¿s arrest and struggles with surviving as he is suddenly poor he also has fallen in love with a devout Hasidic.---------- This is a deep historical fiction tale that warns the audience that religious prejudice harms individuals, families and communities regardless of the group claiming God¿s blessings. However, the key to this well written thought provoking cautionary tale is the Amin family. Each took for granted their status under the Shah choosing to ignore the atrocities and the threats to their lives once the upheaval occurred. Thus the Guard sees the Amin family, especially Isaac, as part of the problem. Dalia Sofer provides a poignant family drama using a twentieth century pivotal point as the catalyst.---- Harriet Klausner

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